Eagle Rare Single Barrel Bourbon - Review

Kentucky Home Grown

by Jeff Hoyt

Just
as true Champagne must be made in France,
Bourbons can only hail from the U.S. of A. And what better
symbolizes America than an eagle and a buffalo? Eagle Rare
Single Barrel Bourbon is produced by the Buffalo Trace Distillery,
America’s oldest distilling site in Kentucky’s
Franklin County.

As with French appellation wines, distilleries have strict
rules to follow in order to label their whiskey products
bourbon, such as corn making up more than half the grain
used. Despite popular belief, Jack Daniels is not a bourbon
because it undergoes a charcoal filtration before barrel
aging.

To
label a whiskey as Kentucky Straight Bourbon, the rules
are the most stringent of any distilled spirit: it must
have been distilled and aged in the state where Bourbon
was born for a period of at least one year, and then continue
to be aged for at least one more year. Eagle Rare meets
all these requirements and more. This Kentucky Straight
Bourbon owes its smoothness and great balance to ageing
ten years in charred American white oak barrels. This golden-amber
colored whiskey has a creamy texture, and vanilla, caramel
and toffee flavors. It has a long finish, with a little
raw alcohol note that melts away when ice or water is added.
It is sweet, but packs a powerful punch.

The
Buffalo Trace Distillery is a family-owned business more
than a century old, best known for producing Blanton’s — the
world’s first commercial single barrel bourbon — but
also produces other whiskeys like Sazerac
Rye, and vodka. During Prohibition, Buffalo Trace produced
more than a million pints of whiskey for medicinal purposes.
Eagle Rare Single Barrel is certainly good medicine for
what ails you.